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Editorial: Decision To Donate Organs Transformative

If all went according to plan this morning, one mother’s heartache may have been the Christmas miracle five or six other mothers were praying for.

Plans had been made for Austin Elder, the former Southside football player who was injured in a fall last week, to be taken off life support this morning, so his organs could be donated to perhaps five to eight different recipients.

Elder, a University of Arkansas at Fort Smith student, fell about 100 feet from Hawksbill Crag in the Upper Buffalo Wilderness Area on Dec. 8. Physicians hoped he would survive, but according to friends, he suffered two strokes Wednesday that left him without brain function.

This morning, his family planned to honor his wish to be an organ donor.

It is a generous and almost unthinkable act of courage for a family no doubt casting around to understand why life, which had seemed so good just more than a week ago, now seems to have gone so terribly wrong.

At any given time, more than 100,000 people may be awaiting an organ transplant, according to the Mayo Clinic website. Many of them will die before an organ is available; those in need always outnumber the donors.

Someone is added to a donor waiting list every 10 minutes. And, on average, 79 people a day receive transplanted organs, but 18 people a day die awaiting transplant, according to organdonor.gov.

If you wish to be an organ donor, please make sure you tell your loved ones. That way, if the unthinkable happens, they won’t have to think, they’ll know.

Austin’s Southside coaches describe him as a very special young man, one who always fought against the odds.

“He was the littlest kid on the football field, yet he played with the biggest heart — there’s no other way to describe it,” Southside coach Jeff Williams said.

No doubt that was why those who loved him were so sure he would overcome his injuries.

But when it became clear that was not to be, his family made the hard choice that Austin’s big heart should be used to save someone else.